“Should we head back?” Will asked, taking a mental snapshot of the whitecaps crashing against the shoreline, the gulls diving through the mist. A little guided imagery for the return trek through the pipe with JB.
At the entrance, JB sucked in the last drag from his cigarette before tossing the butt onto a pile of kelp. As he stepped into the pipe, he grimaced. “Dammit. The old knee’s actin’ up again. You get the car. I’ll wait here.”
Will rolled his eyes, reaching down to retrieve JB’s trash. It’s no wonder JB had been without a partner for a year. Until Will had shown up, with nowhere else to go, and drawn the short straw.
“Are you the litter police now, too?”
The smoldering butt had rolled onto the sand alongside the pipe. Next to it, Will noticed something peculiar. He slipped his phone from his windbreaker and snapped a few photos, before he pushed aside the sand to reveal the object, hard black rubber and paddle-shaped.
“What is it?” Will asked, as JB leaned down to get a closer look.
“I have no goddamned idea, but I’d say this litter bug might’ve just found you a clue.”
Bonnie’s body lay naked at the center of a metal table. Beneath it, a rubber block lifted the chest, though Chet hadn’t done any cutting yet. The bone saw rested, clean and lustrous, on a cart behind him. It kept catching Will’s eye, winking at him under the fluorescent lighting.
In the bright light, nothing could be avoided. Including the deep scratches beneath Bonnie’s jawbones. Self-inflicted, according to Chet. She’d fought like hell to free herself from the garrote, even as it squeezed the life from her.
Chet carefully removed the material from her neck and placed it on a tray for closer examination. The length of blue fabric was tied between two wooden dowels, which had been hidden in the rainwater. As Chet gently pulled at the edges of the cloth, Will’s chest tightened.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” JB pointed a gloved finger at the yellow California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation stamp. “You were right. Prison issued.”
“What about the handles, Doc? Any ideas?”
Chet nodded at Will, picking up one of the dowels so that the end was visible. “These holes were probably drilled in, and the fabric inserted with a wire and a stop knot to keep it from slipping out. Because the ends have a little weight to them, the assailant could easily toss one across the victim’s throat and catch it with the other hand. Then, pull back tight. It takes considerably less effort than manual strangulation.”
JB frowned at the handles the way he frowned at Will sometimes. Like a fly he couldn’t quite catch to swat. He paced around the small tray, crouching to inspect it from all angles, until finally he smacked his hands together. “I’ve got it. I know exactly what they are.”
JB preened while Chet photographed and measured the garrote, speaking into a recorder as he moved. When he finished, he placed the garrote in a clear evidence bag for further testing for fingerprints and DNA.
“So, are you gonna tell us or should we guess?” Will asked, finally.
“Get this. My third wife, Bev, she was a hell of a lousy cook. Also, a hell of a nag, but that’s neither here nor there. Her grandmother had given her this antique rolling pin, and she got this wild idea that she was gonna bake her own bread from scratch. That dough was hard as a brick. So tough that one of the handles popped right off. She was always on my ass to fix it. Anyway, it looked just like that.”
Will shook his head at JB. Half annoyed, half amazed, he couldn’t help but smile.
“I think you might be right,” Chet told him, taking another look at the dowels.
“Damn-skippy, I’m right. I’ll bet you Chief Flack nominates me for Detective of the Year.”
“Detective of the Year?” Will asked. “Aren’t there just two of us?”
JB shrugged. “Guess you’re runner-up then.”
Chet met them outside the examination room having shed his gloves, his face shield and lab coat. The smell of formalin still wafted from his clothing. Will had been to enough autopsies to recognize it as the official odor of death. It seemed fitting, the way it grabbed you by the throat. The repulsive way it lingered in your nose. He’d probably still be smelling it tonight, after a long, hot shower. Death doesn’t wash off easy.
“Gentlemen, you’ve got yourselves a homicide. That’s for certain. Death by asphyxiation, likely early Thursday morning. No obvious signs of trauma to the genitals. No tearing of the cervix or vaginal cavity. But, given the state of undress, I don’t think we can rule out a sexually motivated murder at this point.”
“C’mon,” JB said. “Tell us something we don’t know.”
“I’m getting there, Jimmy.”
“Well, could you speed it up a bit? My stomach’s been growling all morning since City Boy here had me runnin’ laps through the muck in that damn tunnel.”
“Alright. Remember how I showed you those reddish-purple stains on the victim’s lower legs and feet? Those are the lividity stains, the lowest point on the body, where the blood pools after death. They become fixed somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours.”
JB groaned. “Give it to me in English, Clancy.”
“I think what Doc is saying is that someone moved Bonnie’s body at least twelve hours after her death.”
“Exactly,” Chet said. “Before that the blood had already pooled in the lower extremities. That tells me she was sitting. And for a while, too.”
Will’s phone buzzed in his pocket—“Give me one minute.”—and he left Chet and JB, pushing through two sets of double doors and out into the crisp, fresh air. A welcome relief, even if it didn’t quite rid his nostrils of death’s perfume.
“Will Decker, Homicide.”
The caller took a long, shaky breath. “Uh, Will. Detective Decker. I didn’t know if you’d answer. It’s James McMillan. You told me to call if I thought of anything, and, well… there is something I’d like to talk to you about.”
It had been nearly two years since Will had felt it, that blood-pumping, heart-pounding, indescribable rush of chasing a lead. Of working a homicide. The last two years in San Francisco, that part of him had gone numb. Like he’d been packed in ice. Slowly, slowly, he felt himself coming alive again.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Could you come alone? It’s just that Detective Benson’s ex-wife’s grandson goes to school with Noah. And, I’d rather talk to somebody that’s not so local.”
“Of course. I understand.”
Will understood better than anyone. Sometimes the people who knew you best didn’t know you at all.
Will volunteered to swing by Fog City Cinema to speak to the manager about the security footage, while JB stayed back at the station with a sack of barbecue ribs from the Hickory Pit and a mission to identify the strange object they’d found half-buried on the beach near the entrance to the drainpipe. It might amount to nothing. Just a piece of discarded junk washed up onshore. Or not. Will flipped and flipped and flipped that mental coin as he drove down Pine Grove Road toward the McMillan house.